10 Amazing Facts About the Apple Park – Apple’s New HQ

In about 2 months’ time, Apple will move to its futuristic HQ called Apple Park.

The new Apple’s HQ or Apple Park concept was presented by then CEO Steve Jobs (1955-2011) to Cupertino City Council just a few months before he passed away.

The ground breaking ceremony started in November 2013 and the construction hasn’t stopped for the past 3 years and by April 2017, Apple’s new HQ will be ready for use.

The new HQ is located at 19111 Pruneridge Avenue Cupertino, CA 95014. That’s only about 5 minutes’ drive away from its current campus at 1, Infinite Loop.

As you can see from the Google maps image above, the circular shaped of Apple Park building is very prominent and surrounded by freeways, residences, malls and offices.

10 Amazing Facts About the Apple’s New HQ – The Apple Park

Here I present to you 10 amazing facts and features about the Apple Park.

1. The whole site is being built at an estimated cost of USD 5 billion. The land cost alone was estimated at USD160 million.

For Apple, that’s quite a small fraction considering that they now have a cash reserve of approximately USD 246.09 billion as reported by CNBC.

2. It has the world’s largest panels of curved glass.

3. The shape of the building is circular, with a total area of 2,800,000 square feet (260,000 square meters). To put that into context, that’s about an area of about 208 olympic-sized swimming pools.

4. The Apple Park covers a total area of 175 acres of rolling parkland.

5. The site will be powered by 100% renewable energy with 17 megawatts of solar panels on its roof top.

6. The building will be naturally ventilated and it won’t require any heating or air-conditioning for nine months within a year. That means it will be one of the most energy efficient structures in the world.

7. As it will become a tourist attraction, Apple has built a visitors centre, cafe and of course the Apple Store. There’s also a 100,000-square-foot fitness centre catered for Apple employees.

8. The parklands with Apple Park allows people to have up to two miles of walking and running paths. There are also pond, orchard and meadow within the ring’s interior grounds.

9. Eighty percent of the site will be green space and planted with grassy fields and over 9,000 native and drought-resistant trees. The City of Cupertino has listed out close to 150 species of trees and many of them have been planted at the Apple Park.

10. Finally, there is a theatre built to honour Jobs’ memory and for all his work. It will be named the Steve Jobs Theatre. The theatre comes with a 1,000-seat auditorium with 20-foot-tall glass cylinder, 165 feet in diameter, supporting a metallic carbon-fibre roof.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook commented on Apple Park for the press release:

“Steve’s vision for Apple stretched far beyond his time with us. He intended Apple Park to be the home of innovation for generations to come. The workspaces and parklands are designed to inspire our team as well as benefit the environment. We’ve achieved one of the most energy-efficient buildings in the world and the campus will run entirely on renewable energy.”

Aligned with Apple’s tradition of keeping things very secretive before launching any of their new products, Apple has not released any interior photos of the building.

This time Apple is also doing an excellent job of preventing any leaked photos of Apple Park by people or contractors working at the site.

I’m pretty excited to see photos of the new building once it’s occupied by Apple’s staff in a few week’s time!